Rash driving led to two deaths in Gurgaon yesterday. The tragic death of cardiologist Pankaj Gupta and his three-year-old daughter on Monday morning shocked Gurgaon, alarming people to really think about its road safety. There have been 308 registered road accidents, this year, in three months till March 31, leading to 103 fatalities and a large proportion includes pedestrian deaths as was revealed by the traffic police records.

According to the police
data, in the past three months Gurgaon
has witnessed 42 pedestrians deaths as well as two cyclists deaths in
road accidents. Inspite of almost 50 per cent pedestrian deaths, as
per the police records, no safety measures are visible whatsoever. As
was reported by the Times of India, on the contrary, in metro cities,
roads are still being designed for motorized transport alone, with
hardly any thought to pedestrian facilities such as cross over points
and segregated walkways.

In
Focus

There are three factors
that might lead to an accident- the driver, the road design and the
vehicle. ''You can't change the drivers much, and the vehicles have
no problem with them. So the main problem is with the way we design
roads,” said Binoy Mascarenhas, manager for urban transport at the
research firm EMBARQ India.

Mumbai is more than 10 times the size of Gurgaon, but the accident
rate in Gurgaon is almost equal to Mumbai. ''The roads here are built
for speed, even in situations when speed is not desirable,'' he
added.

Talking about the requirement of Gurgaon roads, Binoy Mascarenhas
informed that there are several things required here such as every
road with more than two lanes for traffic requires some kind of
refuge island, a median or divider, in the middle for better
pedestrian safety.

When the spot light turned to police, officers said that the
department has been writing to the civic authorities in this regard,
highlighting the need for infrastructural upgrades were
required. Vinod Kaushik, DCP, traffic said the traffic official were
now trying to enforce lane-driving on city roads. And it will work to
minimize casualties.

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